The Information Technology (IT) Projects Seminar will give students
real-world experience understanding and solving IT software and
systems problems. This course will involve a set of
projects at local corporations and other institutions. We will
organize students in teams of about four. Each team will undertake
one IT project that lasts the semester.

Proposed Projects

Admission

To work productively in our projects students must possess sufficient
technical and/or managerial skills. These skills can be obtained
by academic training and/or experience.
In particular, for CS students, the Software Engineering course is a pre- or
co-requisite.

As the set of skills cannot be precisely specified,
interested students should contact Prof. Arthur Goldberg (artg@cs) for
permission to register.
Email a resume or short bio, with the word ``Projects'' in the ``Subject'' line.

In addition, we will limit the number of students who can enroll
to no more than 30.

Prof. Goldberg will email admitted students a 4-digit access code.
Register for the course as ``Advanced Laboratory in Information
Systems'' (G22.3812.001).
CS students can register by calling TorchTone and providing the access
code. Unfortunately, students enrolled in Stern must appear in person
at Stern registration.

Course Resources

Unix machines - Prof. Goldberg will have accounts created and disk space allocated on
Warren Weaver Hall machines as needed.

PCs - The course owns one Pentium 100 MHZ, 1.6 G, CD-ROM, high
speed video card, multimedia PC. It will be located in the ACF, 2nd
floor Warren Weaver Hall. We'll use it to test and develop software.
Unix and Windows NT need to be put on it.

Students

Team Composition

At the first class meeting each student will rank each project's
desirability between 1 and 10. Prof. Goldberg will assign students to
teams by the second class. He will try to maximize the total
satisfaction achieved, assign students to projects for which they're
skilled, and allocate some CS and some MS in IS students to each team.

Students will work in teams composed of CS and MS in IS students.
Each expertise and talent will support the other, so CS students with
weak management and/or language skills can feel comfortable, as should
MS in IS students with weak technical skills.

We encourage clients to break projects to 1 and 2 person tasks so team
members can work independently.

Presentations

Scheduling and Students Employed Full-time

Some students who work full-time want to take the projects course.
They may do so.
Class meets
most, but not all, weeks. Attendance is mandatory, as
class meetings include technical and operational lectures by both
students and Prof. Goldberg.

Typically each team meets weekly with the client. However,
work for a couple of the proposed
projects would be conducted primarily at NYU. Students unable to work
at client sites should apply for these projects, and Prof. Goldberg will try to
assign them accordingly. If no such projects are staffed, then these
students should take the course another time. Resources for running
special individual projects are not available.

Students should know that the Projects
course, like all graduate CS courses at NYU, demand significant
effort. Doing a good job will require an average of 6 - 12 hours of
work a week, and students who want to excel will need to devote that
level of effort.

Communications

All students and client supervisors must read and respond to Internet
email daily. All students should join the g22_3812_001_spring96@cs.nyu.edu
class mailing list. Send an email to
majordomo@cs.nyu.edu with

subscribe g22_3812_001_spring96

in the message body.
Hopefully, the message history can be made
available on our Web site. Prof. Goldberg will use it to multicast
email to the class. Each project will form its own mailing list.

Each team needs a team liaison responsible for organizing interaction with
the client. The liaison's job includes

Schedule initial and final meetings with team, client and Prof.
Goldberg.

Schedule first couple meetings between client and team.

If you want to be your team's liaison, volunteer.

Each student must send Prof. Goldberg a weekly email progress report on Thursday before
class. While this sounds bureaucratic and impersonal, but it's the only
way I can efficiently track all the students in the course. Spend 5-15
minutes composing the progress report (so if you work 8 hours/week on the
class the report takes at most 3% of class time - not too bad). Writing the
report will help you evaluate how you're doing. The report contains:

Description of the week's goal(s)

Description of progress towards the goals(s)

Description of obstacles (s) making progress difficult

List of ways, if any, I could help progress

Please email the report with a subject line of:

Projects; "client"; "week number";

so my software can parse and organize reports.

Grading

Three in-class presentations (technical, progress, final report) 30%

Progress Reports 5%

Technical Accomplishments 40%

Final Report 25%

This document and associated materials were authored or compiled by Arthur Goldberg.
This compilation and supporting electronic teaching materials may be freely
used for non-commercial use provided any electronic or print version includes
this notice.
All rights reserved. Copyright Arthur P. Goldberg, 1996.